Smeaton on I Peter 4:1

by alexd281

I Peter 4:1– “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm
yourselves with the same way of thinking, for as many as have suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin”

George Smeaton, p 444, Apostles Doctrine of the Atonement—“Peter recapitulates after completing the intervening parenthesis (3:19-22). When he resumes his previous expressions, he can only refer to Christ’s vicarious sufferings in the flesh. He bids Christians to
realize the fact that, in Christ’s sufferings as their surety, they were co-crucified. Here then we have another instance in which Peter and Paul use nearly the same phraseology in speaking of our death to sin.

Any other explanation is unnatural. Those who represent the expressions as alluding to what Christ encountered in his earthly life from men, and explain the second clause of the believer suffering in Christ’s cause and after His example, can produce nothing to satisfy the forcible terms…